Hillcrest Apartments

I’ve lived here 2011 – 2012, then 2014-​present.
PROS:
Quiet wooded area.
Close to Southcenter Mall and businesses.
Close to I405, I5. 17 min from Downtown Seattle.
Nice views from some balconies. Large Balconies with storage.
Good maintenance staff. Good grounds-​keeping staff.
Good value for the price.
Pet friendly.
Good neighbors, usually super quiet.
Park near by next to a river.
Management has a high turn-​over, but a few of them were great — Monica, Tina and Denise!
CONS:
Uncovered parking. Too few parking spots.
Cars get broken into often.
No big chain grocery stores near by.
Office no longer accepts packages for the tenants.
Comcast is the only cable provider accepted here.

As you can see from Hillcrest Apartment’s website, Bonavista Management LLC handles all the paperwork and staffs the on-​site office. That is where 99% of your nightmare problems will come from. Moving up the chain of command to complain to the state registered owner, Qiuyan Yang, will produce no good results either because Qiuyan Yang claims to never have heard of Hillcrest Apartments. (Yet go through King County library resources or visit Washington state’s website and Qiuyan Yang is clearly depicted as the rightful owner.)
BACKING UP A BIT: If you contact Bonavista Management directly for any kind of professional reasons you will be highly disappointed because they will not intervene on behalf of renter’s rights. Example: Hillcrest Apartments office staff constantly forget they cashed your rent check on time but instead post a «Pay or Evict in 3 days» notice on your door. If you contact Bonavista to prove the rent check has already cleared your bank account, and reiterate that you have always paid your rent on time, days later you will still get the $ 50 late fee posted on your door. (This problem of paying rent, being told to «get out» for non-​payment, then getting charged a late fee for paying on time happened to me three times in the year that I lived here. Meanwhile, it kept happening to my neighbors too and Hillcrest Apartments does not leave such notices on the door in a discrete envelope. They print out an «8−½ X 11» eviction notice and display it wide-​faced on your door for all your neighbors to see!)
Point is — I did manage to get every $ 50 late fee reversed, but WHO wants that kind of hassle when you pay rent on time every month?
ANOTHER PROBLEM: if you like having your home constantly invaded by your landlord then give this place five stars. Me? I hated repeatedly getting «48 hours notice to enter» (sometimes two and three times a week!). After the tenth such notice I started keeping copies of all the paperwork they were leaving on my door (for legal reasons).
Beyond that? Bonavista Management and Hillcrest Apartments cannot keep office staff in their employ. I lived here one full year (lease ended January 1, 2016) and in that amount of time they had three different office managers. The first one (who I signed my lease with) was super cool and friendly. I really thought I was going to love living here with ready access to I-​5, 405, and plenty of shopping nearby but truth be told there are no normal sized grocery stores in Tukwila at all. (In a pinch, when I did not have time to drive to Burien or Renton for groceries, I’d end up buying groceries at Target, near Westfield Southcenter Mall).
If you decide to live here, Do NOT order packages through UPS. UPS will not leave packages at your door thanks to theft. The office manager will intercept your packages — sign for them — but won’t deliver them to door either and she locks up early so you cannot ever gain access before or after normal working hours. Once I quit using UPS and went through the United States Post Office (because USPS mail carriers will actually leave packages at your door if you sign for the risk of delivery) Hillcrest Apartments staff kept posting messages over the USPS signature cards left on my door (so I missed delivery of packages once again).
My neighbors at Hillcrest Apartments were all pretty cool. A multi-​racial community, I felt very safe living here as a single white woman; providing I did not walk around after dark (not like walking around Capitol Hill in Seattle). Tukwila has a real creepy vibe here at night over all. Neighbors were all pretty friendly; especially after all our cars got hit by a vandal who smashed in our car windows and there was a lot of clean-​up work to do.
When Hillcrest Apartments gave me the notice that they were not going to renew my lease, I had been living month-​to-​month on my paycheck so I asked if they could give me a break on my last month’s rent so I could afford to put a new deposit down somewhere else. They refused. Also refused to give me any reason for not renewing my lease. Yet my neighbors were just getting eviction notices (supposedly for non-​payment of rent — when they denied ever missing a payment).
To sue Hillcrest Apartments (when they don’t give your deposit back even when you cleaned the place to shine better than a very bald man’s head) go to the Burien District Court. There is no district court that’s closer. It costs $ 25 to get a court date there and to file a small claim against these highly unethical people.

If you can deal with car break-in’s, poor management, flea’s, ants inside your home, management loosing your house key then stuff comes up missing in your house and then the manager quits and the company just tells you to make a police report then you should move here. It’s super affordable. I took over a lease which only had 4 months left which should of ended June 2015 and now they are telling me my lease isn’t up until Feb 2016. I keep asking for a copy of that lease and I have yet to receive it. Been waiting for a month now. I will never live in another bonavista conplex again. I can go on about this company. I can’t wait to get out of here. I don’t trust nobody that works here. I changed my locks so nothing else comes. up missing. They stole two laptops with the chargers and 900 $!

The parking here is very bad. I live at the top of the hill and if there were ever a fire, there is no way in hell a fire engine could get around up here.
Management doesn’t care about any of the rules. You can literally get away with anything. Smoke pot, no problem. Sell pot/​drugs, no problem.
If you piss off other tenants, they WILL mess with your vehicle.